Many organizations use business intelligence software to trigger specific actions when defined conditions occur. For example, an email alert may be sent to a sales manager of a company if sales during a given period fall below a specified trigger level, or to a claims manager of an insurance company if the number of claims filed during a given period exceeds a specified trigger level.
Alert trigger levels are typically set by a business analyst or a subject matter expert based on a knowledge of the associated business. In the claims scenario described above, for example, the claims manager may set a trigger level that is 5% higher than the past month's average number of filed claims to trigger an alert email.
Although current business intelligence software applications have the ability to set trigger levels, in all cases, the trigger values are manually set and/or “hard-coded” based on a static analysis of data or from subject matter experience. Unfortunately, the ongoing maintenance of such trigger values is very time consuming and manually intensive.